Karl

As so often happens, solved it without the faintest clue as to the theme. I wasn’t aware that B and N are words. Silly me.

LIRA was clever. ALLTHAT and POLISCI were just labored. Someone is trying too hard to be tricky, and it’s not working well.

Ugh. Way, way too many proper names in critical places. I don’t normally comment on Wednesday puzzles, but I was seriously out of sync with this one, and we all know it can’t possibly be my fault. I’ve enjoyed puzzles that I had trouble with. This one was just annoying.

SHINE ON for deceive? YOINKED? What planet are you guys living on? Also, TRITE for “not fresh” isn’t anywhere close to how I understand it to be used. I solved it, thanks to a couple lucky guesses, but high bogosity levels take the fun out of it.

I was pretty skeptical when I saw the grid with the wheels. It turned out to be rather fun! (Excepting the usual annoying movie and music lookup of names I’ve never heard of.)

I solved it, and I still don’t have the *slightest* idea what the italic clues were all about. Truly bizarre Monday puzzle.

Mostly enjoyable! Too bad about the southwest corner, which didn’t quite measure up.

Loved KINDASORTA. Tricky without being bogusly obscure, and a minimum of pop culture references (which I invariably have to look up). Me liked!

A bit easier than the norm, perhaps? Or maybe just clever clueing without unnecessary obtuseness. Very enjoyable.

I’m surprised that I don’t see more whinging about TINCTS. The stuff that colors a tincture is more usually a TINT. Oh well, not fatal.

I loathe and despise rebuses. Having said that, this puzzle wasn’t quite as loathesome or despicable as most rebus puzzles.

This Monday was a little trickier for me without being obtuse. A nice puzzle.

Definitely one of the better Saturday’s recently. I was stumped until I stopped using definition #1 of the key word(s) in the clues. And almost no annoying pop culture lookups, yay!

I loathe rebuses, but I have to admit that this one was kind of cute.

A pleasant enough puzzle. I still don’t get BABYMOON, though.

I was ambivalent about this one as I reached about halfway through. Then, I did southeast and had the revelation. Well done!

Eyeroll. The Traveling Wilburys a supergroup? I don’t think so. The usual excess of obscure title fillings (1957 jazz? Seriously?) and proper names substituting for invention. Not impressed at all.

Had to look up CJCREGG as I never watched that show and the crossings weren’t helping enough. (CPR a graduation requirement? Really? Not in our state and it wouldn’t have occurred to me.) Overall a kind of cute puzzle.

Cute theme and a minimum of obscure (to me anyway) pop culture references. A very enjoyable Sunday puzzle!

Mixed feelings on this one. It seemed like there were a lot of trivia lookups, and LUND is outright incorrect. On the other hand the long acrosses were kind of fun.

SQUEE was delightful. Not an easy one by any means. On the plus side, and unlike the unfortunate run of Saturdays of a few weeks back, there weren’t any clues where I said “well THAT’S not right.” Nice one!

Oddly, once the obligatory (and annoying) lookups of random pop culture clues, this puzzle went very quickly. It’s nice to be in tune with the author for a change.

Today’s “words” that I’ve never seen or heard were HATEWATCH and ASMR. I don’t expect to ever see them again, except maybe in a late week crossword. Oh, and INCOGMEATO, but I expect to have to look up at least one obscure brand or name on Saturday.

Way better than last week. I’ve never heard of PADIDDLE or JORTS, but it was thankfully light on the pop/movie culture proper names. Good one.

I never heard any of the theme songs, or I did, I certainly don’t remember any of the lyrics. Annoying puzzle.

Strange puzzle. I solved without too much difficulty by looking up the proper names, none of which I had heard of but that’s normal, then guessing at words and ignoring many of the clues. I’m still not entirely sure why some of them worked. (Petty person is probably the longest stretch.)

Weird Tuesday! Irritating, yet cute. I’m still not sure whether I liked it or hated it! The theme was clever, but too many clues seemed disconnected from the answers. Let’s call it a nice try that fell short.

One of the best Saturdays in weeks, IMO. Lose the foreign language clues and it would be practically perfect!